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About SmartNet and the goals of the SmartNet Community

Whilst astronomy as a science is historically founded on observations at optical wavelengths, studying the Universe in other bands has yielded remarkable discoveries, from the signature of the big bang in the radio, the birth of young stars in the millimetre and infrared, through to high energy emission from accreting gravitationally compact objects and the discovery of gamma ray bursts.

Unsurprisingly, the result of combining multiple wavebands leads to an enormous increase in diagnostic power. But powerful insights can be lost when the sources we wish to study vary on timescales shorter than the coordination between bands. This is an extremely difficult issue to address adequately as it crosses the boundaries of source class, observing bands and even methodological approach.

In July 2015, the workshop “Paving the way to simultaneous multi-wavelength astronomy” was held as the first concerted effort to address this at the Lorentz Center, Leiden and was attended by 50 astronomers from diverse fields as well as the directors and staff of observatories and spaced-based missions. A white paper was produced out of this meeting and published with the goal of disseminating the findings of that workshop, the problems identified and the solutions we believe are vital to implement for the future of observational astronomy, and with the hope to stimulate further discussion and the overall awareness of the community of these issues.

The website you are visiting now is the shared platform of the SmartNet community, aimed at sharing ideas, news, and useful data. We aim at optimizing the multiwavelength effort for all future Astronomical events that will require a fast responding and well coordinated community.